A look inside my sketchbook

everyday matters

I cannot say enough how thankful I am for all your messages and comments. As someone who doesn’t have any real life sketching friends an online support network can heal and inspire. I feel so happy with my decision to come back and am excited to share and connect again.

With that, here are a few sketches from the last week or so. Going back to my favourite subjects: food and flowers!

I sometimes feel I get a dependent on sketching “things” since I find sketching a landscape or cityscape daunting. So many details to get lost in. I challenged myself by drawing the view from our deck of our new hammock in a particularly wild part of the garden. Hoping to get more confident with these sorts of scenes in the upcoming months.

Yesterday we took a trip out to a couple of local farmshops searching for seasonal treats, particularly purple sprouting broccoli and rhubarb. Purple sprouting broccoli is only available in early spring so it always feels like an occasion when we have it. It is also quite beautiful with its purple florets, just a shame it goes green when you cook it.

I felt like dipping back in the watercolours last night and went for straight-to-watercolour slightly abstract, loose, splashy look to this spread. The broccoli is probably more abstract than I intended but the one thing I am particularly pleased with is the variation in colour. Now I’m really looking forward to the growing season to get a chance paint and draw more vegetables!

Have you done any fruit or vegetable drawings? Or growing anything in the garden this year?

It’s been a while since I’ve sketched with a pencil, I did some very early in my daily art project but then started inking over my drawings with pen and then progressed straight to pen drawings. I love the boldness of pen but decided to do some more pencil drawings to see how I felt about it.

A few tulips in my garden have just started to open and it was fun sketching them in pencil. I started out with very light lines making the basic shapes and then went progressively darker. I forgot how nice it is to have softer shadows.

In the evening I did this one of some spoons my husband carved a few years ago. The pencil works better for the texture of the wood than pen. The only things I didn’t enjoy was smudging the graphite with my hand. I worry that these probably won’t last long-term in the sketchbook.

I’ve been trying to use watercolours in my “everyday” sketchbook pages and feel like I’m finally getting to know and understand how they mix and the look I’m wanting. It is so fun to splash a bit of colour on the page. These were all done in with Daniel Smith paints, and I hope to write a post about them soon. Short story is I am in love!

Can’t wait for your bread to cool? Do a sketch of it while you wait!

Super quick sketch while my eggs were cooking in the pan this morning.

Obligatory playground shoe sketch, these are my husband’s boots.

This was a negative painting exercise. I really have a thing about shoes I guess? And splatter, can’t get enough of that splatter.

Have you done any sketchbook pages this weekend? Sending a bit of warm spring sunshine to all of you!

I’m sure a lot of us would love to sketch so much of what we see if only we had the time (or ability), but in reality we always have to make decisions about what we draw. I always find this interesting because these decisions often unconsciously define who we are, if only for that moment.

The other day I had a few minutes at the playground with the children. There were so many things I could have sketched; the playground equipment, the trees in the area, the houses and buildings, but instead I sat down and drew my shoe.

It’s hard to explain why I decided to draw this instead of all of the other options. I liked the challenge of the foreshortened view and often find my favourite sketches are the simple “everyday” things in life. Stuff in your bag, what you ate, your desk… These details can say such a lot about a person and maybe that’s why I find them so fun to do.

The next day I managed a little drawing of our county council building from yet another playground (see a common theme here?) I loved all those strange angles, though I got the proportions a little wrong I feel like it still reads well as a building.

And here are the trees and bushes to the right of the buildings. I love both natural and manmade landscapes, but still struggle to render them in a way that makes me happy.

How do you decide what to draw? Do you have a favourite subject that you keep coming back to? Do you think your choices reflect the kind of person you are?

At the beginning of the month I declared I would make February “comic month” and make a comic everyday in addition to the usual art I was doing. I originally planned for my comics to look something like this:

I imagined they would be mostly figures with knitting inspired writing. I left the goal open ended to include anything including what I’m wearing, doing or eating.

My condensed contribution to Hourly Comic Day.

While I did do some traditional comics with characters I ended up doing a few of these recipe inspired illustrations which I enjoyed. This was probably my favourite to draw (and eat!)

Food is definitely emerging as a favourite subject around this time too.

Around the middle of the month I started using watercolours and they started to feature more heavily in my daily comic.

Until finally I just started doing these simple everyday matters type of watercolour illustrations.

For me it’s particularly interesting to see how this month has evolved. I had a really clear image of what I expected to be doing, but when it was time for me to do my “assignment” I went with what I was most interested in doing. Turns out that I love doing these little food/recipe vignettes way more than traditional comics with characters.

Committing to a long-term project like this can teach you a lot about yourself. I’m glad I deliberately kept it open ended enough so I felt success even with my changing interests/mediums. I also learned that just because you love a certain style doesn’t necessarily mean that you will love drawing it.